Warner Bros. and director Adam Wingard have confirmed that their live-action ThunderCats film remains in development more than five years after the project was first announced.
The announcement came during a summer interview with Polygon, where Wingard said he worked on the movie “in earnest” earlier this year. The director’s passion project has been overshadowed by blockbuster films such as Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire and the A24 action-thriller Onslaught, which is now streaming.
“My career’s kind of bouncing around, so different things have taken precedence,” Wingard said. “[ThunderCats] is still kicking around. I think it’s just a matter of finding time to really re-concentrate and re-engage with it. We did a new draft at the beginning of this year. It wasn’t too long ago, and then things got put on hold for [Onslaught]. So I don’t really have any exciting updates.
“But it’s not dead. It lives. It’s just not the number one [thing] I’m working on right now.”
A brief history of the ThunderCats movie
Wingard and Warner Bros. announced the ThunderCats film in 2021, when Deadline described it as a “big-scale feature” based on the ThunderCats animated TV series. Wingard worked with writer Simon Barrett—who wrote or co-wrote the screenplays for Godzilla vs. Kong, The Guest, and Onslaught—to expand the ThunderCats universe.
At the time, Wingard called ThunderCats “a dream project,” recalling that he wrote a 272-page screenplay about the cartoon while in high school.
“My real obsession with ThunderCats came in high school,” Wingard told Deadline in 2021, “the pinnacle of me deciding I wanted to be a filmmaker. […] I actually spent most of my 10th grade year, I completely blew it. I didn’t pay attention in school, made terrible grades. And the reason? I was writing my ThunderCats screenplay through my entire 10th grade year. And I was hand-writing it. The screenplay itself ended up being 272 pages long. I still have it.”
Adam Wingard to Deadline
Wingard told Deadline his approach would be a “new type of fantasy sci-fi spectacle film that people have never seen before,” while staying authentic to the cartoon’s retro look.
“I want to do a ThunderCats film that takes you back to that ’80s aesthetic. I don’t want to reinvent the way they look; I want them to look like ThunderCats. I don’t want to do it live action, either. I don’t want it to look like Cats. […] I want to do a movie you’ve never seen before. A hybrid CGI film that has a hyperreal look and somehow bridges the gap between cartoon and CGI.”
Adam Wingard to Deadline
While updates on the project have been rare, the director recently left his planned sequel to John Woo’s Face/Off. His continued involvement with ThunderCats is seen as a positive sign for the film.
There’s another ThunderCats movie
In June at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation announced it was developing a separate ThunderCats movie, offering virtually no details on who is attached or when it will be released.
Godzilla vs. Kong
announced
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
Onslaught
Simon Barrett
Wingard told Deadline
recently left his planned sequel to John Woo’s Face/Off
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